Railroad bed



April 29, 1924.' 1,492,373

H. HALTER I RAILROAD BED fired Deo. 8, 1919 lidetented .,ipr. 29, 1924.

STATES PATENT osmosi HERMANN HALTER, F MUNICH, GERMANY, AyssIeNon To s. J. HEIBERG, or CHICAGO,

- ILLINOIS. f

RAILROAD BED.

. Application ledDecembcr 8, 1919. Serial No. 343,447.

To all whom may concern.'

Be it known that I, HERMANN HALTER., a

subject of the King of Bavaria, and residing at Munich, Germany, Kaulbachstrasse 60a', have invented certain new and useful'lmprovements in Railroad Beds (fory which'I have been granted a Swiss Patent No. y79,444, June 19, 1918, and a British Patentv No.

140,116), ot which the following is a specifi-V alent at the rail joints where the eiiect prof duced by the weight of passing trains is greatest.

A bed of uniform substance extending beneath the track is not capable of offering a higher resistance at the joints whereV the eiect is greatest.` For this reason the sleepers at the joints of rails on new or comparatively recently'laid tracks lie at most places on hollows and continually require renewed packing or tamping, and if this is neglected the fish plates keep breaking od, the rail ends bend, the whole structure lbecomes loose, and hollows form atthe railjoints with all their evil consequences. This will happen in spite of strengthening the rails and fish-plates, of making the sleepers broader and placing them closer together near the joints, using the best kind of bed material, providing special layers of bedding material and of increasing the height of the road material foundation. p

A permanent good and uniform rail support can only be obtained by enhancing the carrying capacity of the bed at the points where the stress on the rails is' especially heavy.

This object of the present invention is attained by embedding rigid grids or trellises in the road material beneath the sleepers as near as practicable to their bottoms7 the members of these grids increasing in 'width from top to bottom down to a certain point and then decreasing from thesaid certain point to the bottom.-

These grids or trellises impart an increased carrying capacity to the rail bed by decreasing the liability of the parts of which the v which isl not detrimental to bed is made up to shift apart from each other. The pieces of road material or parts constituting the bed are forced wedge-like intov the funnel-shaped openings of the grid, sothat they are prevented from giving yway y,to verticaland lateral pressures to Y which they are subjected. To the roughness of the Sparte, which is accountable for the carrying Acapacity of the bed, afmechanical binding fo-rceris added, which is due to the grid and the elasticity and the free passage of Iwater through the bed. By placing the grid high up in the bed near to the bottoms of the sleepers it is made to act asy a common support over which the pressure of two adjacent sleepers, each bearing an end of two adjacent rails, is evenly distributed. The surfaces of the grid or trellis support, which slope towards each other, are peculiarly adapted to completely divide the pressure and to distribute it evenly over the layers of the railbed and the vground beneath.

A method of carrying o-ut the invention is illustrated in the drawing in which,

Fig. 1 is a cross section through a track supplied with the grids or trellises.

Fig. 2 is a longitudinal section of the same, and 4 Fig. 3 is a plan view of a fragment ot track in which the road metal is omitted.

Fig. 4 shows on a larger scale a section of a grid or trellis of Fig. 3 on the line a-b, the grid or trellis being made of reinforced concrete. t

In order that the grids' may be securely embedded in the material forming the track, and that they may not sink down, their bottom surfaces are .made as broad as possible and to slope upwards. The topsurfaces of the grids however are made as small as pos sible in order that the pressure may bear less upon thesek surfaces than upon the' sloping inner surfaces of the openings in the grids so as to promote the eii'ect of pressure distribution.

The sizeof the openings in the trellises is such that the Vmaterial.constituting the bed, which may be unevenly distributed due to displacement by the lower sloping surfaces whilst shifting the grids to and fro before they are got into their final positions, may enter into and find room in the openings. l Y

The surfaces of the grid or trellis-must not be made too large, for this might/cause depressions of the .bed by the grid.

The grids or trellises must be laid upon a layer of bed material at least 4 inches thick, upon which they will participatey in the elastic motions of the bed.

I claim:

1. A reinforcing grid for road beds of railroads, comprising a flat body portion adapted to be embedded in the comminuted material ofthe road bed and having a plurality of vertical openings therethrough, the

walls of said openings converging gradually from the upper surface of the body portion to near the base thereof and to bind and hold together the coniniinutedrnaterial above the body portion, and said walls' at their lower ends abruptly flaring'into the base to'present inclined anchoring surfaces at thek lower .side of the grid 2. A reinforcing grid for the road beds of railroads, comprising a body portion I Y IVitnesses megeve adapted to be embedded in the coniminuted material of the road bed and having a plu` rality of spaced apart bars arranged in intersecting and angular relation to one an- 'bars having beveled marginal edges topprovide laterally facing anchoring surfaces adapted to engage theV material of the road bed and prevent shifting of the grid in the road bed.

I In testimony whereof I aliX my signature in presence of two witnesses.

HERMANN HALTER.

KAPLAN VVETZ, VVILH. ILALLEWEUN.V 

